


Ready Homestuck One

by mamestuck



Category: Homestuck, Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:40:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2120583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamestuck/pseuds/mamestuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homestuck fandom: This is the fic that answers that sad hollow feeling you felt upon reading "Ready Player One" and realizing that you know basically nothing about 80s nerd culture. But you do know a hell of a lot about Homestuck. I present to you a fantasy within a fantasy about obsessive fandom minutiae being relevant for securing billions of dollars for some reason.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ready Homestuck One

Everyone remembers the night Andrew Hussie died. Ordinarily it wouldn't make the news; just another billionaire dying, hardly more important than another meteor hitting earth and obliterating yet another city. In any other circumstance, people would see his obit on the news, curse the lucky bastards who inherited his vast fortune, and move on with their evenings.

But that was the thing: Andrew Hussie had no heirs. As his crude (yet mesmerizing) flash-animation will explained, all of his money, and authorial control of MSPAINT (Multiplayer Simulated Programmable And Immersive eNtertainment Technology) would pass to the lucky fan who uncovered the "Easter egg" hidden within the sprawling world that was MSPAINT.

In order to get the egg, a user would have to find four keys and unlock four gates: Blue, Red, Rose, and Jade. There were very few clues, Hussie being a notoriously cryptic man who loved to troll his fans (pun intended). But one thing was clear: an understanding and familiarity with Hussie's various obsessions would play a critical role in uncovering the egg.

Immediately after the announcement, everyone was worked into a frenzy. The mspaintadventures.com servers were down for weeks during system overload during which time avid old-timers and new fans alike scoured the webcomic well-known to be the inspiration and basis of the MSPAINT system. Sales of horse dildos skyrocketed. Every costume shop in the country was sold out of grey paint, as cosplaying in public became a de rigeur fashion statement. Everyone wanted to be part of it. Even those who couldn't handle painting all of their exposed skin grey at least wore orange bracelets to indicate their "in-the-know" status.

Then a year passed. And another. Excitement died down. After five years and one month (or four years and thirteen months, but I promise this was just a coincidence), there had been no change to the mspaintadventures.com main page. Until one day, a single name appeared on the sidebar. Someone had found the first key.

That person was me.

There have been many accounts of what happened next, but they have all been incorrect to various extents. I wanted to write down what actually happened, in order to set the record straight.

***

I spent most of my time trawling around Earth01, an exact replica of Earth as presented in the Homestuck comic, which is to say that its landmasses were vast continents comprising thousands of copies of Maple Valley, Houston, and upstate New York, plus hundreds of secluded "Pacific" volcanic archipelagos scattered across the oceans. Every neighborhood on the continents was identical, and all of the houses and buildings were a uniformly pristine white that could never have existed in the real world.

My avatar had randomly spawned in Maple Valley, and that was, more or less, where I remained. You see, admission to MSPAINT was free, but transportation cost money; cars, boats, airplanes, and spaceships required virtual fuel. Users could buy a seat on a spaceship (or an entire ship, if they had the dough) and visit hundreds of planets hung densely throughout Paradox Space, or explore the Furthest Ring. I had seen screenshots of the horrorterrors, of one of the many copies of the Meteor. Closer to home, I had seen shots of happy users virtually splashing about in the tropical waters of Jade's island. The fastest and most convenient way to travel, of course, was Transportalizing, but that cost even more money.

Seeing that I was largely broke, I was stuck in Maple Valley, spending my time with a handful of acquaintances, generally watching Nic Cage movies in one of the copies of John's living room. 

During the first few months of the Hunt, I was frustrated nearly to the point of tears at my inability to travel. Fans were scouring all of Paradox Space for clues to the Blue Key, and I was stuck in Lamesville, U.S.A. 

But they hadn't turned up anything. Not on the Meteor, not on the Battleship Condescention, not even in Gl'bgolyb's humongous belly (and I salute the user with the HP to venture /there/, and hope they didn't have a smell tower installed as part of their haptic immersion rig). 

***

It was one pleasant afternoon in April (which it always was in Maple Valley) when my brain suddenly did an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle. I had been watching Wild at Heart for like the twelfth time (and engaging in friendly banter about the parallels between various instances of Lynch's oeuvre) when I realized a key feature of the riddle that supposedly led to the first clue

A young man stands in a blue shadow  
Although it was in 1984 that he had been given life  
It is only today that he tastes the rainbow  
This riddle brought to you by Skittles (R).

The "taste the rainbow" line in the riddle had been much-debated. Who knows if Skittles had actually sponsored that riddle or not, but sales went through the roof (for a time, nearly surpassing Gushers as the nation's #1 most popular candy). But suddenly, I knew what it meant. Taste the rainbow. Rainbow drinker. Vampire. Nic Cage, "I'm a vampire!"

I almost jumped out of my virtual seat and hollered in triumph, but this would have raised suspicions among my viewing partners. Instead, I sat tight, full of giddy energy. 

Of course, this was only one piece of the puzzle. What did the rest of the riddle mean? The "young man" in question was obviously John, but the "blue shadow"? After giving up hope to unlocking the riddle, most people just chose to believe that this just referred to the fact that John's color was blue, and that the Blue Key had something to do with John (well, duh). 

Then another inspiration struck me. I was still thinking about Nic Cage in Vampire's Kiss, and his ridiculous fangs. Who else had fangs, and was related to the color blue? Vriska Serket. And where had she stood (or cast a shadow) when she visited John's house? Next to the tire swing, in front of the Ghostbusters-themed bouncy thing! And 1984 was, of course, when the original Ghostbusters movie had been released!

After the movie ended, my friends gradually winked out, all logging out of MSPAINT and back to their real lives where they presumably had homework or something. I logged out too, to avoid suspicion, but logged back in an hour later. I ran to the backyard, jumped on top of the slimer-thing, and shouted "I'm a Vampire!" 

Nothing happened. I tried again. And again.

After hours of repeating this desperate ploy, I began to get virtually dizzy, and fell off the damn ghostbusters thing. I skinned my virtual knee on the virtual lawn.

That's when Dad came out. He spawned commonly enough as an NPC, but generally only told shitty jokes and offered users virtual cakes. But this time, he walked straight towards me and gave me a hug. Presumably, comforting me for my skinned knee. After the awkwardly-long hug concluded, he held out his hand. I thought about shaking it, but then thought again, since he probably had a trick buzzer or some shit. But instead, his hand contained a single item. Not a prank buzzer.

The blue key.


End file.
